32 Student Rights Handbook Local Advisory Board Ames W. Chapman Ph.D., Chairman, Sociology Department, Central State University Mrs. Fannie Cooley Mr. Donald Curry Cities Planning Council Mr. Charles Curran Commissioner, City of Dayton Professor of Political Science, Sinclair Community College Mrs. Elizabeth Davis Mr. Sydney O. Davis Greene County Mr. Willis Davis Art Director, Living Sister Mary Ann Roy Fairfield Honorable Arthur O. Judge, Montgomery Mr. Leon Frazier President, Dayton Mr. Jesse Gooding Mr. David H. Jones Mr. David L. Jones Mr. John W. Kessler Miss Mary Lawson Reverend Richard Protestant Chaplain, Mr. Richard Levin Mr. Donnie Moore Miss Linda Mooty Mr. Michael Motley Lester G. Mullens McClendon, Jr. Mr. John McClendon, Sr. Mr. Gary McCrimmon James H. Pelley 18 Chocolate faces in vanilla places (and other great suspenders of our times) I. In September, Mark Lewis was among 81 students bused from his mostly black, low income Jefferson Elementary School neighborhood to white, middle income Valerie Elementary School in Harrison Township. A short time later, he was suspended for 10 days. "The little primary school kids were playing outside at lunchtime, white kids and black kids. I saw a little white boy going back into the building, crying. I stopped him and asked him what was wrong. He said that he and Dan Freeman, a black boy, had been fighting. I started to take him over to Dan to talk things out. The white boy's brother tried to take him from me and back into the building, but I brought the white boy to the primary school entrance. Someone else brought Dan Freeman." Instead of talking things out, the white boy, frightened, got on his knees and begged Dan Freeman not to hit him again. Everyone went back inside to class. "The next morning, Dr. Fields, the principal, called me into his office. The little white boy and his mother were sitting in the office. Dr. Fields asked the white boy if I had egged on the fight. The boy said yes. Dr. Fields said to me: 'From this minute on, you are suspended from school until further notice. I will take you home. Go get your books and come back to the office.' "It was about 10 o'clock. Dr. Fields drove me home and let me out in front of my house. He told me to tell my mother to call him. He drove off. My mother didn't get home until 2:30 in the afternoon. I went over to my brother's house and kept checking to see when my mother would get home." Four and a half hours after Dr. Fields had left Mark out on the street, Mrs. Josephine Hobson, Mark's mother, came home. "I took Mark right back to school," she says, "to see Dr. Fields. He told me that if Mark hadn't stopped the white boy from going back into the building, the fight wouldn't have happened. Mark got to tell his side of the story for the first time. He told Dr. Fields that the fight had happened before he saw the white boy and that the white boy was crying from the fight when he saw him. dan geringer article "Dr. Fields listened. Then he apologized to me and Mark for what he had done. Dr. Fields told us he had gotten angry and acted too quickly. He said he knew he shouldn't have suspended Mark and left him in the street like that. He said Mark could come back to school the next day." II. The Dayton Board of Education's rule on suspension, published on official administration stationery and signed by Dr. William Goff, assistant superintendent in charge of pupil personnel, states: "Ohio law grants to the building principal the authority to suspend a student from school for a period of not more than 10 days. The use of suspension as a disciplinary measure should always be preceded by a careful and judicious evaluation of the total situation involving the student. Normally, other methods of guidance and control should have been tried and the parents should have been apprised of the growing sen ousness of the student's behavior." III. Late in January, Dr. Fields received a letter from Elabeth Scondrick, an employee of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 1456, whose job it is to nde buses where children have misbehaved consistently and to report on the situation. In her letter, she listed the names of 29 Valene School children, accusing them of swearing, name calling, talking to the driver, moving from one seat to another, leaving the bus before it stopped, and defying authority. In order to get the children's names, she passed a piece of paper around and asked them to sign it. Then she wrote down her accusations and sent ber letter to Dr. Fields. Only nine of the 29 names had individual discipline violations next to them. After the names of four stu dents, Mrs. Scondrick wrote: "more or less with the crowd." After two others, she wrote: "late every morn ing." After Mark Lewis' name, she wrote: "I told him to dr. fields interview by brian smith peter gillespie photography RAP OF DAYTON: JUNE |